


Give Up the Ghost

by nosferaju



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 12:38:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19476094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nosferaju/pseuds/nosferaju
Summary: The Inquisitor realized a fall befitting a shirker would be entirely his own doing.





	Give Up the Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Three missing scenes taking place between A Call to Action and Rebel's Resolve. 
> 
> The Grand Inquisitor exercises projection all over the place, enjoy!

“Because that’s when we’re strongest. As one.”

The Inquisitor’s eyes moved to Kanan. He didn’t rock with the ship like Agent Kallus and the troopers. 

_You really have taught him nothing._

The Inquisitor felt the stumble in Kanan now that the airship’s missiles made contact. He let himself smile wide, beside himself with hope. He’d pictured a grander fall, like the Temple’s, with lights and smoke clawing towards the heavens, but as he watched the communication tower’s foundation collapse into itself, the Inquisitor realized a fall befitting a shirker would be entirely his own doing.

Governor Tarkin stopped boasting and the air between the Inquisitor and Kanan grew tight, they were pushing each other in the Force. The Inquisitor allowed Kanan respite, probing him with minimal effort, and felt him shiver at the realization he was asking for a kind of permission into his head. Relenting, the Inquisitor scrunched his brows together, looking to the view outside and away from Kanan’s labored breathing. The landscape of Lothal quickly shifted from grasslands back to civilization. The lightshow of the city had nothing on Coruscant; that alone he missed about the Temple: a view from up top. On this airship he stood among the clouds too, but so did about five troopers, an ISB agent and Tarkin. The Inquisitor looked to Kanan again, his head was lowered and the Inquisitor wanted terribly to fix the hilt of his saber under his chin, tilting it towards the skies where it belonged. He shut his eyes, smirking to himself as he pictured both he and Kanan, wrists still bound, pushing those undeserving many off the airship. Perhaps Tarkin would flail, even his ridiculous helmet—

“Sir, we will be arriving before your Lambda. Shall we move the prisoner to a holding cell until your shuttle docks?”

The Inquisitor blinked, swallowing his pride upon understanding it was Governor Tarkin the pilot was addressing. 

“Governor,” Kallus spoke up, “Might I suggest sedating the prisoner—”

The Inquisitor interjected, “The Jedi has shown no resistance. He fears too deeply for his followers.” He punctuated towards Tarkin, “I have felt it.”

“Keep him detained, Inquisitor.” 

Tarkin wouldn’t look him in the eye, but the Inquisitor delighted in the glare in Kanan’s. He’d feared now that he’d been captured, the chase was over and with it the rush that halted the everlasting, aching itch. He smiled small at Kanan, something secret between the two of them, harkening back moments ago when they were at the tower’s base and Kanan had fallen to his knees. 

_Looks like I have time to meet your friend, afterall_ , he’d said, then prodded the Inquisitor’s austerity with humor. The Inquisitor understood this to be not a gesture of bravado, but instead curiosity. The same curiosity he’d felt every day he’d been a prisoner to the Jedi doctrine, trained to neglect the parts of the Force, of himself, that were more than natural, they were inevitable. 

⁂

Once Kanan had abandoned his violent foot tapping for synopacted breathing, the Inquisitor spoke up, “Enough of that.” He wanted to laugh, so he did, but only a huff in the presence of Imperial architecture. The thought of Kanan rehearsing his training in loss of emotional control while in such a panic was endearing. 

Kanan sat on a bench, while the Inquisitor stood against the holding cell wall, keeping an eye on the Governor’s prisoner. Not actually at the moment, he favored for the first time the vacant gray of the Imperial facility's walls. It allowed him to ruminate the Governor’s orders: keep the Jedi, the _alleged_ Jedi, still. He wondered how much Jedi there was in Kanan, and how much there was of this supposed Spector.

“Spector One…” He said under his breath, turning his head towards Kanan.

Kanan slowed his breathing, his eyes darting the floor.

“I’m calling you. Isn’t that your callsign?”

Kanan swallowed, “Not much good now.”

“No? I can think of nothing more appropriate. Spector.”

Kanan scrunched his eyebrows together and looked up at the Inquisitor with less caution than he deserved. 

The Inquisitor curled his lip, “Reveling in anonymity.” He was still speaking softly, almost to himself, “As if the galaxy didn’t know you existed...until I found you.”

_You can stop running. You’re exhausted._

Kanan kept his gaze, mouth hung open, there was something he wanted to say, but couldn’t put into words the feeling of morbid familiarity. 

“Pardon.” 

The Inquisitor looked side-long at a trooper who’d trodden rather unceremoniously, boots clanking against the steel floors, into he and Kanan’s space. 

“Governor Tarkin is ready for the prisoner to be transferred.”

The Inquisitor pushed himself off the wall and into the trooper’s face. The trooper looked up at the Inquisitor, as did Kanan watching what was less an exchange and more a prelude to something sinister. 

“They sent you?” The Inquisitor ran a finger up the trooper’s chest plate until it hooked under the jaw of his helmet. Kanan felt the fear cascade like cold water off the trooper. The Inquisitor turned the trooper’s helmeted face towards Kanan; it was hollow even with it looking right at him, Kanan thought. “Not even a captain. Vacant, plain,” The Inquisitor brushed the trooper’s shoulder, “No pauldron. Nothing.”

“See how little they think of us.” He said to Kanan. “This is the escort we are rewarded.”

Kanan wanted to reach a hand out to the trooper, let him know he wasn’t in any real danger, then the binding on his wrists reminded him they both were. 

He watched the Inquisitor move his hands to the trooper’s shoulders, seemingly to steady him. The trooper didn’t steady, he rattled, and as he rattled more violently, the Inquisitor’s grip tightened.

Kanan’s breath quickened, “What’re you doing?”

The Inquisitor was focused, and gleeful. Kanan had never seen a trooper use such strength to simply hold his blaster at attention. He felt an energy rolling off him different than the fear, this was like being stranded in biting cold stripped naked, left with nothing to protect you from the elements. It was a primal discomfort, one that told you your will would be your only tool for survival. Kanan winced as the trooper shivered like a hairless Talz in a snow storm. Kanan didn’t know if he’d asked the Inquisitor to stop or just had the thought to.

“What propelled you to serve the Empire’s military?” The Inquisitor asked, he’d not relented in the intensity of his attention.

“I want to be mama’s favorite. I want to make my brothers and sisters jealous. I want her to recognize them as failures, and me as the helmsman of a mighty Star Destroyer.”

The Inquisitor snorted, “But you’re no Admiral.”

“I-I...”

“Tell me what you are.”

“I am. I am the A-Admira-”

“No.” The Inquisitor said softly. The stutter in the trooper’s breathing was audible. The Inquisitor’s smile curled, his brows rose to match his anticipation, and as if shepherding him, began to mouth something muted. 

“I am a stormtrooper. Of the 412ᵗʰ legion.” The trooper said, “I rank...below my squad leader.”

The trooper’s shoulders dropped under the Inquisitor’s hands. They both exhaled in tandem.

“Lie to your mother, but don’t lie to yourself.” The Inquisitor said, “The lie will kill you. The truth only hurts.”

The Inquisitor smiled devious at Kanan, but Kanan couldn’t keep his gaze.

When he opened his eyes he found the trooper standing at attention, with his back to the Inquisitor, marching out the room, and the Inquisitor’s hand upturned towards him: an offer for instruction. Kanan refused, getting up by the grace of whatever constitution he had left. The Inquisitor took a hold of his shoulder, leaning in close he said, “You can’t hide here. The Jedi’s lies destroyed them, and from its grave came the pure, _natural_ Force.” The Inquisitor’s voice lilted in what Kanan would call a plead, “Would you rot, or sprout from their burial grounds?”

Kanan swallowed, keeping his eyes on the vacant gray of the Imperial facility’s walls.

The Inquisitor watched Kanan’s eyes as he continued, “The truth only hurts, and the dark side rewards that pain. Could you have ever said the same for the light?”

⁂

The Inquisitor held the weight of head in his palm as it lolled to the side. He was sat in a room on the Sovereign, swiveling back and forth in a chair positioned towards the expanse of space. After Kanan was handed over to Tarkin, he was told to await further instruction.

He was getting itchy again. Tarkin and his followers didn’t believe that Kanan could bypass their system of interrogation; as with most Imperials, it was an exercise in stubbornness. He imagined the frustration on their faces and scoffed a laugh. The Temple spared no expense in time for training against methods of torture, that is methods of conventional torture. The Inquisitor had found the most effective method of torture was at the hands of the Temple itself, though few would agree with his interpretation of the word. The way he felt now, aching to act, was something akin to it. 

He watched the smoke clouds circle the surface of Mustafar. He assured himself Kanan would break before he was brought to Vader’s castle. There existed the possibility his crew would investigate where he was being taken and what it meant, and if they were stupid enough to chase after him, he’d be smart enough to use that. 

_Didn’t your Master teach you about attachment? Its curse? Or was she too preoccupied with running laps around battlefields? Fighting,_ as one, _with the other Jedi._

However, if their cause trumped their friendship and Kanan was left to Imperial devices, he'd still find ease in toppling his flimsy foundations, reveling in their demolition. Kanan laid before the Inquisitor fertile ground to build something stronger than the Temple ever would’ve.

He scrunched up his face, and moved his hand to cover his grimace. How Kanan had allowed himself to become so entrenched in delusion that he believed he was common, as unseen, as his crewmates stood testament to his pain. Once Tarkin got his fill, placated his war-mongering spirit, Kanan was his. Tarkin could fight the rebels to death, the Force bound together those special few and ensured their greatness be recognized. 

“Sir.” It was the sound of someone sent to fetch him, the Inquisitor didn’t bother turning around, he knew it was another unremarkable trooper. 

The Inquisitor lowered his hand from his mouth, his fingers catching the curve of a smile _, But I do hope he puts up a fight._


End file.
